Posts Tagged ‘third person shooter’

Defiance is a science-fiction-themed persistent world MMO third-person shooter from Trion Worlds. Defiance takes place on a terraformed Earthseveral decades into the future. It is a tie-in to the Syfy show of the same name. The game was released on April 2nd 2013 for Microsoft Windows,PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It was also released on Steam.

Gameplay

Arkfalls

Much like in Rift, Defiance has “dynamic events” called Arkfalls. These arkfalls are massive chunks of alien ships, which contain valuable technology, that crash down from space, attracting a handful of friendlies and enemies, as well as on occasion attracting masses of alien creatures and dozens of ark hunters.

Character customization

Origins

Unlike other MMO’s Defiance does not have classes but rather players can choose from an “origin”. Origins do not limit what abilities, weapons or outfits the players can choose from.

Physical appearance

Players are said to be able to have a great deal of control over their physical appearance including hair, clothing and tattoos. Players can choose to be either a Human or an Irathient (a humanoid alien species).

Weapons

Players have access to a wide variety of weapons from hand guns to assault rifles and grenade launchers to shotguns. They are also able to modify weapons with new sights, grips and upgraded magazines and barrels.

Abilities

The Ark Hunters are injected with an EGO (Environmental Guardian Online), a symbiotic, neuro-muscular bionetic implant developed by Von Bach Industries, which helps players navigate the Bay Area and gives them access to unique abilities.

Arkfall Codes

Trion introduced a new rewards system called “Arkfall Codes”. Players use these 6-digit Arkfall Codes to unlock special bonuses and customization for their characters such as extra inventory slots, titles, and perks. These codes are hidden in various media such as official blogs and videos.

Characters

Karl Von Bach – CEO of Von Bach Industries, the man who hired you to come to the Bay Area

Varus Soleptor – A Liberata, one of the Votan species, he is a business owner and a very rich person

Torc Mok – A Sensoth, one of the Votan species, former soldier

Rosa Rodriguez – A genius inventor who operates Top-Notch Toolworks

Cass Ducar – An Irathient and an ark hunter

Eren Niden – A Indogene, one of the Votan species, bio-technician who works with Rosa

Jon Cooper – The local “Lawkeeper” and former military soldiers

Joshua Nolan – War veteran and ex-grifter

Irisa Nyira – An Irathient girl who was rescued by Nolan

The Xbox 360 version of Defiance has been plagued with technical difficulties since its launch. After putting the disk into the Xbox 360 and installing it (you need to install the 5 GB game onto your hard drive before you can start) and nearly 30 minutes solid of patches and updates, the game promptly crashed. This was actually due to a server update that Trion warned gamers about via an in-game notification system, but it remained down for quite awhile. This has been a theme, and these frequent updates can last hours.

Defiance requires you to be online, so when the servers are down there is literally nothing you can do in the game. You can’t even mess with the options. Trion has been good about giving as much notice as possible, but it’s cold comfort for people locked in combat with a giant enemy for up half an hour to see that their session is going to end, possibly right after they win but before the game can register it and credit them (this happened to two of my friends). Random boots are also a common occurrence, and they can happen at anytime.

The game continued to tell me my objective was to wipe out the enemy, but it also had three icons signifying three weapons caches I was meant to sabotage. There was even a little icon at the top of the screen, signifying three targets. I dutifully followed the targets and found… nothing. Just… nothing. There was nothing to sabotage or interact with. There were no enemies to kill or objectives to complete. After several minutes, I decided to restart the mission, but with no better luck. I restarted my console, and still nothing. In a game where the majority of mission objectives are completed by shooting people a bunch and holding the X button to interact, this was an obvious flaw. I skipped the mission and moved on to another and I will retry it later.

So as for the review, we will hold off through the weekend and hope for the best. It isn’t fair to judge a game on what we hope will be a very temporary problem, plus the issues have slowed any progression. Check back next week and we’ll update this page, hopefully with a legitimate review.

Army of Two: The Devil’s Cartel is a third-person shooter video game developed by the Montreal branch of Visceral Games and released on March 26, 2013 by Electronic Arts for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. It is the third game in the Army of Two series, following 2008’s Army of Two and 2010’s Army of Two: The 40th Day. The game takes place in Mexico and pits T.W.O. against a ruthless drug cartel known as La Guadaña (Spanish for “the Scythe”). It is the first game in the series to run on the Frostbite 2 game engine where as the previous two ran on Unreal Engine 3. The demo for the game was released on March 13, 2013. It was the last game developed by Visceral Montreal.

Gameplay

Where as the last two games focused around characters, Salem and Rios, Army of Two: The Devil’s Cartel will focus around two new T.W.O. operatives named Alpha and Bravo. It is speculated that the reasoning behind the unidentified names is to give the player the feeling that it is them fighting through the missions.

Returning from the first game is the Overkill mode, which makes both players invincible for a short period of time. However, features such as back to back, playing rock, paper and scissors with your partner, and other co-op interactions have been removed in favor of a more fast-paced gameplay. Competitive multiplayer from the second game will not be returning to focus on a richer co-op experience.

Features

It has been noted that the game will feature more customization options compared to the previous games in the series. The Devil’s Cartel will feature a mask creator which allows players to completely customize their masks, thus giving their TWO operative its own persona. Customers can pre-order the Overkill Edition which comes with bonus weapons, masks, outfits, and missions that are not available with the standard version of the game.

Review Roundup

Eurogamer

There is a scoring system based on how well you work with your partner, but it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. A basic kill will earn you $10 in the game’s monetary XP system. A flanked kill, however, is worth $75. Also worthy of a bonus are surprise kills, acting as a distraction and combining your efforts to take down the same enemy. However, the way the game works out these bonuses is often inexplicable, awarding you high scores for things you didn’t even know you were doing. An enemy can come dashing towards you, engage in a prolonged melee tussle, and when he goes down you get a “surprise kill” bonus. Before long, you stop trying to play clever with tactics and just do whatever works. That, ironically, tends to lead to much better scores.

On a technical level, the game feels like an unloved obligation rather than a passion project, and irritating bugs and glitches abound. Cover is sticky and the targeting reticle needed to dash from one safe spot to another appears inconsistently. Characters stumble around each other, the scenery can violently jiggle up and down for no reason and friendly characters will decide they’re not going any further and block your way with mule-like tenacity. More than once I had to restart a checkpoint because the game simply didn’t trigger the events needed to progress. Lone enemies can get lodged in the scenery, or simply don’t emerge from hiding on rooftops, making it impossible to end levels.

5/10

Videogamer

At the start the two main characters are hit by an RPG ambush in Mexico. The game then flashes back to our heroes as they’re trained up to be ruthless, ass-kicking mercenaries, bent on taking on the cartel that set them up. They do this by killing more people than every single armed human conflict combined. As they fight, endlessly, through a repetitive collection of dull brown tunnels, dull brown markets, and dull brown enemy strongholds, they sometimes become invincible, and their guns get infinite ammo, for reasons never explained. And then everything, EVERYTHING, they shoot explodes and everyone’s limbs blow off in a shower of gore.

Clearly they must be dead, I thought, and what follows must then be the dying revenge fantasy of the leads, with the developers using that framework as a big joke at the endless violence/total nonsense on display in video games; including, of course, the last two Army of Two games. It has everything: bland levels, stupid dialogue, over-the-top kill animations, poorly-implemented online co-op, zero-dimensional characters, which are called – no shit, Alpha and Bravo.

Then, roughly 10 hours of shameless (s) laughter later, I realised it probably wasn’t a joke. The references to video game clichés are lampshades to throw players off the fact that they’re too creatively bankrupt to think of anything else other than red barrels or telegraphed plotting. Which means, and this is incredible, that EA has created something this on the money by mistake.

And yet, I couldn’t stop playing it, because it made me laugh – genuine laughter, not snooty guffawing – at how over the top it was, in the same way that Commando might do. The shooting in Army of Two has, for me, always been very solid. There’s a weight to it (and your characters) that makes it feel like you are a death-dealing instrument of doom, and it actually feels like you’re firing a gun, not a peashooter.

A lot of what comprises Army of Two: The Third is total crap, and yet I had a lot of fun playing it. We don’t know how EA has done it. They probably don’t know how they’ve done it. But they have. And I’m glad they did.

5/10

IGN

In Army of Two: The Devil’s Cartel Players find themselves on the deadly streets of Mexico as Alpha and Bravo, two operatives working for Tactical Worldwide Operations (T.W.O.), a PMC outfit that drops them in the middle of a drug war conflict for an assignment full of corruption and deceit. With the ability to unleash the power of ultimate destruction, players will need to work together as their objectives unravel, allegiances begin to blur and they face off against a ruthless opposition.

Featuring both online and split-screen co-op, Army of Two: The Devil’s Cartel gives players the chance to distinguish themselves from their friends by providing a deeper and more advanced upgrade and customization system. From the mask that protects them in battle to the very weapons that keep them alive, players can customize their own Alpha and Bravo to create the deadliest mercenary team as they see fit.

8.8/10

Gamespot

Army of Two: The Devil’s Cartel is a third-person shooter where players assume the roles of mercenaries battling a Mexican drug cartel in the town of La Puerta.

Like this:

Dead Space 3 came out today and that means it’s time to announce some Dead Space 3 DLC!

Mildly psychotic systems engineers who just can’t get enough of the chopping and the stomping will be happy to hear that the “brutal” Dead Space 3: Awakened, the first DLC expansion for EA’s new third-person shooter, will be out in March. The new material will drop players into the “darkest chapters” of the Dead Space series, with Necromorph-killing action that’s “more gruesome and terrifying than ever before.”

“In Dead Space 3 Awakened, gamers will experience some of the most disturbing content they have ever seen in a Dead Space game,” Dead Space 3 Executive Producer Steve Papoutsis said. “They are going to love it.”

And what’s it all about? About ten bucks! Ha! No, but seriously, Dead Space 3: Awakened will list for $9.99 on the PlayStation 3 and PC, or 800 Microsoft points on the Xbox 360. As for where the DLC will take you or what you’ll do in the guise of intrepid hero Isaac Clark, I have no idea, nor do I have any idea why EA seems to think that the best way to handle gamer upset over the presence of microtransactional DLC in Dead Space 3 is to throw more DLC at them on launch day. It’s not as though you have to buy it, but appearance is everything and I can’t help thinking that this comes off as just a wee bit tone-deaf.